Why is my housing not valid?

Question

I can't find the problem, but my house (pictured) is not valid. There are no corruption/crimson on the screen and I have tried different furniture. I keep getting the same error though:

This is not valid housing

Need Help

Updated screenshot: screenshot 2

The walls are Spooky wood and Demonite brick.

Please provide the material being used. There are limitations explained in the wiki of what are valid materials. I gurantee your not using a valid material. — Ramhound, Nov 01 '13 at 17:47
What material is that made out of? It looks kind of like Dungeon blocks which are not a valid housing material... — James, Nov 01 '13 at 17:48
Can you provide a screenshot of your house with the top right having more illumination? — Colin D, Nov 01 '13 at 17:58
Try lighting it up more, for two reasons. One, you may have insufficient lighting (unlikely though it may be), and two, it's really hard to see the whole thing without more light. — Zibbobz, Nov 01 '13 at 17:59
@Zibbobz - it's definitely not lighting. Regardless of the size of the house a single torch is sufficient. — Foo Barrigno, Nov 01 '13 at 18:01
@Ramhound Where are you reading this about valid building material? The wiki pages that I'm looking at don't mention this. — SevenSidedDie, Nov 01 '13 at 18:28
@SevenSidedDie - I was thinking towards the reasons of organic blocks ( i.e. cloud blocks ). — Ramhound, Nov 01 '13 at 18:31

peacedog · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-01T19:07:36.983

First possibility: I suspect your house is too large.

Housing requirements have changed since 1.1 (here's a link to an outdated article on housing at the terraria wiki). As of 1.1, a house needed to be a minimum of 60 tiles and a max of 750 (in addition to the other considerations).

This is an excellent guide to housing from the terraria forums, which is up to date through 1.2. It does not, however, list any hard and fast maximum sizes (it is worth noting that the minimum size in 1.2 is much smaller than the 60 from 1.1). You can do some experimentation to get an idea of how much room you have to work with. Try adding a ceiling somewhere below your actual ceiling, and then check the validity. If you are invalid, move down (contrary-wise, if you start low and are valid, move up).

Wherever you settle on for the location of the "middle" ceiling, you can probably make part of it a platform and wind up with 2 valid housing sections.

Edit (as asker edited after I posted this):

The corruption issue: I see you have built out of Spooky Wood and Demonite Brick (good to know!). It's true that in 1.1 your house's "corruption score" had to be <250 to be valid (with each "corrupt" block in a 45 block radius counting as 1 score). It is not currently known if this has changed in 1.2. There is no evidence that Spooky Wood counts as corrupt so far. I will test Demonite when I get home, however in 1.1 Ebonstone brick (regular ebonstone does; I suspect Demonite brick is safe) did not add to corruption score.

I'm pretty sure it says "This housing is corrupted" instead of invalid if it's corrupted. — 3ventic, Nov 01 '13 at 19:18
@3ventic I think you are correct, but I will try to double check. — peacedog, Nov 01 '13 at 21:00
it's a string in the language code and I thought I saw it when I was trying to move some of my NPCs to crimson. — 3ventic, Nov 01 '13 at 21:01

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 01 '13 at 18:37

0

I anticipate your house's "corruption rating" is too high.

Corrupt blocks, such as ebonstone or demonite, cannot exist in or next to housing. You'll want to make your house out of a different material if you wish to have NPC's move in there.

I made a similar mistake, except I had several blocks of demonite inside an NPC's house as decoration. Only after I removed the demonite could the NPC move in.

answered Nov 01 '13 at 18:37

Gigazelle

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In 1.2 Blocks made from Ebonstone are valid housing material. – James Nov 01 '13 at 21:42

Why is my housing not valid?

2 Answers2